There is something seductive about the promise of digital money. It arrives dressed in the language of progress, efficiency, inclusion, and modernization, as though the ability to hold a coin in your hand were a primitive embarrassment that civilization ought to outgrow. Cryptocurrency evangelists speak of decentralization and freedom from institutional control. Central bankers speak of reduced transaction costs and expanded access to financial services. What neither camp mentions with sufficient urgency is that the digitization of money is, at its operational core, the digitization of permission. And once your ability to buy bread requires permission, you no longer live in a free society. You live in an administered one.

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